Question: Which writer was Salman Rushdie's main influence ?
Paraphrase: Which writer influenced Salman Rushdie the most?
SPARQL (Wikidata):  select distinct ?obj where { wd:Q44306 wdt:P737 ?obj . ?obj wdt:P31 wd:Q5 } 
Answer: Italo Calvino, Gabriel García Márquez, Vladimir Nabokov, Christopher Hitchens